Will laughed. Hendrick took the tray from him. “Thanks, man.”
“Anything breaking?” Will asked, and gestured toward the computers.
“Not a damned thing. I’m thinking about doing my ‘catch a perp’ dance around the room except it requires a good deal of nudity and incense.”
Will laughed again and shook his head. “Nothing you could do would ever surprise me, Hendrick.”
“Whatever is good for the cause, man...right?”
“Right,” Will replied with a wide grin. “I’ll just get out of here and let you eat.”
Minutes later, as Hendrick ate his meal and kept his eyes on the monitors, he marveled at where his life had taken him. He’d never really thought about being an FBI agent. He’d never thought of being any kind of law enforcement official while growing up.
When he’d been attending Harvard on a full scholarship, he’d just assumed he’d graduate with a degree in computer sciences and then maybe start his own business.
But halfway through his junior year, exceeding his teachers’ expectations but bored to death with the curriculum, he’d dropped out.
He’d had no idea what he was going to do. He’d considered backpacking in Europe for a while, but that felt way too clichéd. He’d finally settled for a job with an IT company.
For the next three months, he was once again bored out of his mind. He spent his days doing his job and collecting a sizable paycheck, then at night he wrote code for all kinds of programs just to challenge himself.
When a couple of FBI agents had shown up at his front door late one evening, his first thought was that he was going to be arrested. He sometimes broke through firewalls on the internet. The bigger the company the larger the thrill. He did this just to see if he could, and he’d believed he was busted.
Instead of arresting him, to his surprise, the FBI had offered him a job. He’d landed at the TCD five years ago when he’d turned twenty-one years old. He’d never looked back.
He’d immediately felt at home here. He liked and admired the men and women who were his coworkers, but more important he felt like he’d finally found a real purpose in life. He liked using his brain and his skills for all the right reasons. He liked helping the other agents catch the criminals.
“Come on, Evan,” he whispered toward the blank monitor. “Get me something.”
ONE HOUR BLENDED into another and another as the girls and Annalise remained seated against the wall. Tanya and Emily napped off and on, but Sadie remained wide-awake.
“Are we going to die?” she whispered to Annalise.
“No, honey, we’re going to be fine. We just need to be strong right now. Have you heard the man on the loudspeaker outside?” Sadie nodded. “He’ll make sure we’re all okay.”
Sadie finally settled against Annalise’s side and dozed off. Annalise wished she felt as confident as she hoped her words had sounded to Sadie.
Evan was a skilled negotiator, but he couldn’t talk rationally and work out some sort of compromise with a madman. Evan was good, but Jacob definitely looked and acted like a crazy person, and his wife Gretchen was even worse.
Evan had been talking to Jacob over the bullhorn about every fifteen minutes, but Jacob wasn’t responding. He just sat in the chair to the side of the broken window and stared out. Occasionally one of the other men or Gretchen would come in to whisper with Jacob.
It was after one man left the room that Jacob stood and stretched. “I’m going to leave you alone right now, but if you try to do anything to get away or help the girls escape, I’ll shoot you without hesitation. Got it?” His dark eyes burned into hers.
She held his cold gaze and nodded. A shudder threatened to work through her as he stared at her for another long terrifying moment before he finally left the classroom.
What did he expect her to do? Stuff each of the traumatized girls out of the broken window? That would be far too dangerous. It was possible the children might be mistaken for the killers and hurt or even shot by the phalanx of armed police outside. Besides, she had no idea who might be watching out other school windows and could possibly shoot them all in the back as they tried to run for safety. No, it was far too risky.
However, with nobody watching them there were two things she needed to do. She wanted to get her phone and try to reach police or someone on the outside, and she needed to check on Belinda.
The minute Jacob left, she sprang into action. She raced across the room, grabbed her cell phone and hit 911. “I’m a hostage in the Sandhurst School in North Carolina,” she said when the call connected, speaking as quickly and as quietly as she could. “My name is Annalise Taylor, and I’m here with three students in room 106 at the Sandhurst School. We’re being held by a group called the Brotherhood of Jacob. They’ve killed three people and wounded at least one more.” She then gave her phone number and hung up.
She quickly hung up, replaced her phone, then ran across the room to the doorway. She peeked out. Seeing nobody, and hearing Jacob’s voice coming from another room up the hallway, she raced across to the classroom.
Belinda Baker, the math teacher, was slumped against the wall, her bloody hands holding a wound in her stomach. Next to her was ten-year-old Amanda Ingraham, another student who looked positively terrified.
“Belinda—” Annalise fell to the floor next to her fellow teacher “—how bad is it?”
“I’m not sure, but it’s definitely painful.” The words came in short gasps. “Annalise, you need to take care of Amanda...promise me.”
“I promise, but I’m going to try to get you out of here so you can get some medical attention.”
Belinda released a small laugh that transformed into a deep sob. “Good luck with that. They left me in here to
